Playdate Review: You Can Turn Down The Invitation To Hang Out With This Abysmal Kevin James Comedy

Sometimes criticism can be as simple as saying that a film is very bad. Because Playdate is very bad, but it is also very simple. It is a movie about stupid people doing very reprehensible things, all of which are meant to be funny but are not, and none of which elicits much consideration.

Watching this Kevin James action comedy is like taking a time machine to a time when merely implying a kid is gay could be seen as comedy. None of the action is filmed well, almost everything is unmotivated by even the slightest semblance of logic, and nearly every scene is papered over with a recognizable needle drop that acts like a band-aid on a gushing wound.

Playdate Is Yet One More Embarrassing Blemish On Kevin James’s resume

James plays a weak-willed forensic accountant named Brian who gets fired for refusing to willingly commit fraud and is the kind of spineless loser who is perpetually teased by children for being fat. Brian is not a far cry from Paul Blart, except this time, James has absolutely zero gumption and a strange propensity for threatening kids. He has seemingly become a pretty good step-dad to Lucas (Benjamin Pajak), though the kid’s harmless predilection for dancing and showtunes makes him spout a considerable amount of denigrating innuendo under his breath.

His wife, Emily (Sarah Chalke), takes a job at her old law firm to supplant Brian’s lost income, and so that he can be the stay-at-home parent she was. Emily seems to be totally unbothered by this sudden firing, and takes delight in the knowledge that Brian and Lucas will get to bond more — though, to be clear, they don’t seem to need to bond. Lucas is emotionally mature and expresses gratitude and love without hesitation. It’s Brian who has an issue with emotional expression.

Regardless, the two immediately get into trouble at the park when taken in by Jeff (Alan Ritchson), and his robotic and oddly strong child, CJ (Banks Pierce). Despite the obvious stranger danger, Brian relents at the invitation to go to Jeff’s house for a playdate, in part because it’s clear CJ is the first kid to treat Lucas with any kind of dignity. But, no sooner have they arrived at Brian and CJ’s mess of a house do they have to go on the run when a team of mercenaries swarms in.

Why Jeff and CJ are on the run and from whom remains elusive for a long time, but it’s pretty clear pretty fast that Jeff is not who he says he is. From there, the film becomes essentially a 70-minute advertisement for the Honda Odyssey. Jeff, Brian, Lucas, and CJ outrun the cops, the mercenaries, an Isla Fisher-led mafia of suburban mothers (mamma mafia), and Jeff’s old comrades from the Army.

The entire thing is relentlessly asinine. So much mention is made of Jeff having been a perfect soldier, but the evidence of that is just a flashback where he doesn’t shoot a child. Seems like a pretty low bar! Even though Jeff has essentially kidnapped Brian and his son, Brian sure warms up fast enough to give some requisite unconvincing speech about the difficulty of parenthood in what is, hilariously, the film’s only attempt at pathos.

The twist of who CJ really is is about as obvious as it gets, but the real kicker is the film’s shockingly violent final moment. In the entire buildup to the final scene, you think to yourself, “Well, surely they won’t do this to get out of it,” and yet they do. It’s a singularly wild choice to end the film and which acts as its own indictment of everyone involved. It’s never not lost on me that the entire film essentially only happens because Brian is embarrassed about his son’s love of dancing and pop music.

Probably none of that would matter if the action was shot with any facility at all, but it isn’t, and the movie’s recipe of machismo comedy to machismo action and back again is extremely tiresome. Inadvertently, the film makes a pretty cynical suggestion about how bored suburban men will do just about anything to break their doldrums, including waging war with psychopathic fugitives they’ve literally just met. But nearly everything Ritchson and James do in the name of comedy is forced and untethered from reality. Then again, so is the movie, so at least it’s consistent.